Some comments on male victims as seen on reddit

I am not offering links or usernames so people do not get harassed. Simply to say, this is how it looks like:


This conversation happened on r/2x. That thread had many deleted posts:

Person 1
I said "sexually assaulted", not raped. A girl came into my room, when I was sleeping and took my penis out of my pants and began playing with it without my consent. I'm not sure what you'd call that but it definitely was a violation.

Person 2
I guess... but were you really traumatized by it? The herp sucks, and you should be allowed to go into beast mode for that bullshit. But without that... was it really that bad? I don't think it's fair to try and equate what happened to you with anything a woman goes through in a similar situation.

Person 1
Yes it really was that bad. It happened years ago and I still get mad about it. I was stalked by two different women in my youth and combined with that experience I had a very hard time allowing women to get close to me and the relationships I did get in were with women who showed almost no interest in me because I was terrified of women who showed too much interest. So, yeah, Um.. fuck you.


Person 2
Sorry bro, I'm just heavily entrenched in the 'suck it up' camp. We all got problems.

Person 1
Unfortunately, the "suck it up" attitude is why I didn't bother going to therapy for a long time. I've had bad and unhealthy relationships with women and a lot of the patterns I fell into were from deep mistrust of anyone who expressed a liking or what I felt like was too much of a liking towards me. I've broken up with women that were genuinely good people because they seemed "too into me" and I couldn't handle it. Being stalked and sexually assaulted will do that "bro".

To minimize rape or sexual assault just because the victim isn't a female is a shitty thing to do. It leaves its marks on you no matter what. One of my best friends (male) was raped by an older woman as a boy and he's never been able to have a stable relationship his whole life.

So, take your "suck it up" attitude and shove it. I've had enough loss and pain in my life and sucking it up hasn't helped. It almost always leaves you limping and broken.

EDIT: I don't mean to come across so angry, but nothing will piss a person off more than saying "it wasn't a big deal". I have MAJOR trust issues with women due to things that happened to me when I was young and it's resulted in me getting into unhealthy relationships. Yeah, of course there are victims of rape and sexual assault who have had it much worse, but I take umbrage with the fact that because I'm a man I should just "suck it up". That does not work in the long run at all.

Person 2 (answering to another comment)
It's a big dude whose dick got taken out when he was passed out, and the girl kissed his mouth. Big deal. Now, the cold sore is some bullshit, and that should be dealt with severely, but for the rest, suck it up, cowboy.

In a thread about rape on r/askfeminists by a SRS poster:

How long will society ignore the plight of men who have their unwilling penii surrounded by hostile vaginas? It's a national disgrace!

[...]

Like what would I do to keep from being raped by a woman? hmm... I'm going to definitely start checking my drinks for "date rape" drugs. Because women might try to dose me in order to take advantage and wrap their vaginas around my unwilling penis.

Also: my first instinct was that I should not wear expensive shoes when I'm around certain women. I know that women really like a guy who has nice taste in shoes, and often say that they get so "turned on" that they can't help themselves... but, you know what? I'LL WEAR WHATEVER SHOES I WANT. Why should I have my footware determined by the base instincts of women who rape men?

Reaction to posting the CDC study on r/2X:

Actual estimates for the proportion of rapists who are male varies from "over 99%" to 93% (when statutory rapes are included - as they should be). [...] In order to be honest, we need to fairly represent the complete picture, not just cherry pick ONE special part of the statistic and parade it around as the whole truth. You and I know that the statistics do NOT say 40% of all rapists are women. Stop lying. [...] men and women can stop rape - is also a lie.

Same thread different poster:

Woman on male rape is amazingly rare. Stop being a whiny bitch

[...]

I mean I'm on 2XC to learn about things I'm blinded to to my male privilege. Part of that privilege is that i have no idea how a woman could rape me, so i would like to learn.

From where i'm sitting its pretty close to not possible, and while I've been sexually assaulted a couple of times, I have absolutely no idea how a woman would go about raping me.

[...]

If someone could enlighten me, maybe i wouldn't think it was all a bunch of forever aloners making shit up cause they feel victimized by women. So i ask you, how exactly does a woman rape a man?

One example seen in r/srsdiscussion, a pretty nice place as it seems:

My boyfriend and I are both rape victims. I know and used to be best friends with his rapist. He can't press charges against her because he is 3 years older than her (Age of consent, she was 14, he had just turned 17) and our home state won't allow men to file charges against women for rape.

It breaks my heart to see how much victim blaming he gets if he ever brings it up to people, even other rape victims. I've been siting with him in a public setting and he mentioned it offhandedly and a woman we didn't know came up and threw a drink in his face while yelling "You sexist fucking pig. You can't be raped, you're a fucking man". She didn't even know it was female/male rape. She just assumed a guy must like it if there's a dick involved.

There were quite a few examples I read recently, but will probably add to this in the future.

I have been guilty of this before

As seen on Reddit (thanks BearofHappiness):

Both men and women have genuine, valid concerns regarding the wider treatment of their gender that need to be addressed.

No matter what 'side' you're on, relegating all members of the opposite group according to your opinions of it's loudest (and usually most fundamental) members is not constructive, either to their cause, or yours. It's what makes conversation quickly crumble into individuals (rightly) defending themselves against what is essentially a personal attack.

I agree although as the title says have done the opposite as well.

What we need....

Some exposure for male DV victims in the dailymail. This man speaks the truth:

'I can completely understand why some men will feel embarrassed speaking out - men generally don’t like talking about their feelings.

'But the bigger issue is that lots of men don’t know where to go for help and there’s a lot of gender bias.

'The massive problem is that men are not seen as victims.

'We need a gender neutral awareness campaign, or even a male-specific one.'

Despite his experience, Ian isn’t put off having a relationship again.

'It’s going to be difficult when I meet someone who doesn’t know what I’ve been through,' said Ian.

'They will no doubt ask about my scars, and I’m not going to lie.

'My fear is that they will wonder what I did to deserve it.'

The reason why we should "not" pretend that men are not raped.

From a recent NYTimes article:

Like women, men who are raped feel violated and ashamed and may become severely depressed or suicidal. They are at increased risk for substance abuse, problems with interpersonal relationships, physical impairments, chronic pain, insomnia and other health problems.

But men also face a challenge to their sense of masculinity. Many feel they should have done more to fight off their attackers. Since they may believe that men are never raped, they may feel isolated and reluctant to confide in anyone. Male rape victims may become confused about their sexual orientation or, if gay and raped by a man, blame their sexual orientation for the rape.

“If you’re sexually assaulted, there’s this idea that you’re no longer a man,” said Neil Irvin, executive director of the organization Men Can Stop Rape. “The violence is ignored, and your sexual orientation and gender are confronted.”

Many rape crisis centers — which often also provide services for victims of domestic violence — do not have the resources to counsel male victims. Remarkably few male victims seek professional help for injuries, screening for sexually transmitted diseases or counseling after an attack, often waiting years or decades.

One study of 705 men in Virginia found that 91, or 13 percent, had been sexually assaulted, a vast majority of them before they turned 18. Fewer than one-fifth of victims had ever received professional services related to the assault.

“Men are affected — they have high rates of P.T.S.D. and depression — but the majority don’t get help,” said Dr. Saba W. Masho, the lead author of the Virginia study and an associate professor of epidemiology and community health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s easy for you and I to talk about it, but when you put yourself in that victim’s shoes, they’re asking, ‘Do I want people to know? How do I seek help? Do I want my doctor to know? Where do I go?’ ”

To repeat: "Since they may believe that men are never raped, they may feel isolated and reluctant to confide in anyone."

We have to change that! Even more so when it comes to female on male rape (people are even less likely to believe that). I include some more data from a recent Genderratic post:

studies have shown that sexual abuse does have a profound impact on men, and this includes female-on-male sexual abuse. For instance, the link between sexual abuse and suicide attempts is stronger in boys (Rhodes et al. 2001) and sexually abused boys are twice as likely to commit suicide (Molnar et al. 2001) than sexually abused girls. In addition to that, there is a risk factor for sexually abused men to sexually abuse others is if their abuser was female (Salter et al. 2003.)

Custody in Washington

F&F again with some data on custody decisions:

Washington is the only state that meticulously tracks all custody decisions by its family judges and commissioners. The data show about as clear a bias in favor of mothers as can be imagined. [...]

As but a few examples, in about 65% of cases, mothers get greater parenting time than do fathers. By contrast, fathers get more in only about 17% of cases.

More telling are cases involving “risk factors.” Those are parental behaviors like abuse or neglect of children, drug or alcohol abuse, mental health problems and the like. So, when the parent had one or more risk factor, fathers were far more likely than mothers to be denied all access to their children. For example, 75% of fathers who had abused or neglected their children were denied all access to them, while only 50% of mothers were.

Adding insult to injury, when the father had no risk factor and the mother had one, he got full custody in only 26% of cases. When the sexes were reversed, she got custody 44% of the time.

Novelists and gaps...

I am confused as I found this via Feministing. Here is the piece:

According to Slate's blog Double X, "Over about two years, from June 29, 2008 to August 27, 2010, the Times reviewed 545 works of fiction—338, or 62 percent, were by men." [...] After counting the number of men and women reviewed in The New York Times in 2011, she found that only 40 percent were female. Additionally, 10 men were given two reviews and a profile, while only one woman was (Téa Obreht, author of our first Book Club pick "The Tiger's Wife").

This is something I expected from an article found via Feministing. However this:

And even if men are favored in the literary fiction world, are reviewers really to blame? Salon reported that, when you look at the demographics of books that are published, reviewers are representing the field accurately. In a survey of imprints big and small, "women accounted for around 30 percent of the list, with small independent presses turning out to be even more male-heavy than a behemoth like Random House."

This would mean, (a) if you want to look for sexism, you should look somewhere else (publishing) and (b) if there is a bias, women are actually overrepresented (30% of published books / 40% of reviewed books). Oh my....

Child support, deadbeat moms and debtors prison

Starting point is a Dr. Helen post. I'll jump straight to the data:

A person being in arrears on child support payments is not unusual: in 2008, 11.2 million U.S. child support cases had arrears due.[1] The number of persons kept in jail or in prison for child support arrears is not generally tracked. Based on a publicly available collection of relevant data, an estimated 50,000 persons are kept in jail or in person [sic]on any given day in the U.S. for child support arrears.[2] Hence Turner v. Rogers does not merely concern a technical question of legal procedure. Being in arrears on child support payments is a situation that many persons experience. Moreover, as a result of child support debt, many persons in the U.S. are being imprisoned.

[1] - U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement, FY 2008 Annual Report to Congress, Table 73.
[2] - Galbi, Douglas. "Persons in Jail or in Prison for Child-Support Debt," published Mar. 22, 2011.r

And a comparison between "deadbeat" dads / moms:

Census figures show only 57 percent of moms required to pay child support -- 385,000 women out of a total of 674,000 -- give up some or all of the money they owe. That leaves some 289,000 "deadbeat" mothers out there, a fact that has barely been reported in the media.

That compares with 68 percent of dads who pay up, according to the figures.

[...]men also still pay much more in child support. The Census Bureau last month also released numbers showing fathers paid an average of $3,000 to custodial moms in 1997. Women paid little over half that. Moms also get about 60 percent of what they are owed, whereas dads only get 48 percent.

Not only are the dads paying up more when they don’t have custody, but when the court does hand the kids over to dads, they work more than moms who have custody.

While 7 percent of custodial moms work more than 44 hours a week, 24.5 percent of single custodial dads work more than 44 hours. And only about half as many custodial dads get government help than moms.

Income and Income

I made this argument here several times as you will see when you look at my articles about the wage gap, and the spending power of women. Here is the economic connection:

Why do we care about the wage gap? B/c its a proxy of wealth? Any economist will tell you that income can be measured as good and serviced produced OR as goods and services consumed. Maybe we chose to examine the gender wealth gap in production terms b/c its simply convenient and objectively measured (ie payroll), but I can’t help but think that we don’t discuss wealth in consumption terms b/c feminists would really rather not explore a dimension of the gender binary that would very probably find a female privilege.

Attention, I am not an economist, and certainly do not wish to become one. But did do some digging around:

National income is the amount of goods and services produced in a country over a year, measrued in terms of money. It is the sum total of wages, rents, interests and profits received annually by the citizens of a country. It can also mean the rewards paid to the four factors of production -- land, labour, capital and organization -- over a year for their cooperation in producing goods and services consumed by the people of the country. - Business Environment - A.C. Fernando

He does not seem to be far off. I am not sure if that is only about the national level, but the points still stands. I believe if we look at a gap in terms of spending power, there will be a gap in the other direction.

Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality

An interesting find via Reddit. Thanks Sigi1, certainly an interesting paper:Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality (2002). I cite:

Four theories about cultural suppression of female sexuality are evaluated. Data are reviewed on cross-cultural differences in power and sex ratios, reactions to the sexual revolution, direct restraining influences on adolescent and adult female sexuality, double standard patterns of sexual morality, female genital surgery, legal and religious restrictions on sex, prostitution and pornography, and sexual deception. The view that men suppress female sexuality received hardly any support and is flatly contradicted by some findings. Instead, the evidence favors the view that women have worked to stifle
each other’s sexuality because sex is a limited resource that women use to negotiate with men, and scarcity gives women an advantage.

[...]

The most compelling evidence, in our view, involved the direct influences on adolescent female sexuality, because any culture that wanted to suppress female sexuality would probably direct its strongest efforts toward newly pubescent females. These data uniformly supported the female control theory: Almost all influences on female adolescent sexuality are female, and the sole male influence (the boyfriend) tends to operate to promote rather than suppress female sexuality. Put simply, the influences that restrain female adolescent sexuality are female. Evidence about adult female sexuality converged with the evidence about adolescent influences. Adult women seem more disapproving of female premarital sex and other female sexual activity than adult men. Women have supported the double standard more strongly than men. The more extreme evidence about surgical interventions designed to curb female sexual responses likewise pointed toward female rather than male control.

[...]

Finally, sexual deception seemed most consistent with the female theory. Women conceal their interest in sex from prospective partners, which would be most relevant to negotiating the terms of what the man will exchange for sex. The male control hypothesis that men want to stifle their wives’ sexuality is contradicted by evidence that women pretend to have more rather than less pleasure than they actually have (such as by faking orgasms).

Pretty interesting and also reminds me of a study I have floating around, Study: Displaying cleavage, sexiness can alienate other women:

New University of Ottawa research documented women's aggression against other women wearing revealing outfits; women showing too much leg or cleavage are likely to be ostracized from female social circles as dangerous rivals, the scientists claimed.

[...]

In background information, the researchers noted that competition among males over sexual access to females has been documented extensively for many species, including humans, while relatively few studies have examined intrasexual competition among women over attention from males.
According to Vaillancourt and her team, these results fill a gap by providing evidence that women also see their sexy counterparts as threatening rivals and react against them aggressively.

Not gonna edit....I guess I have to ask thesaurus for a good "interesting" alternative the next time. Ah well, it is all about the data anyway.

"Feminism is the idea that you can create equality by focusing on the issues of only one sex."

As seen on Reddit. This is certainly true of gynocentric feminism.

CDC once again, this time DV

Something not so usual happened as I skimmed through my emails, which I really do not do that often. Well reddit was down, so that is probably why. It is a good thing though. I am opposed to SOPA and PIPA as every thinking human should be and so their protest is a good thing. Anyhow, while skimming through my mails, one friendly fellow forwarded me his summary of the data of the "2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey". And while I can not praise the site they are representing (due to affiliation with NOMAS among others). This was a pretty good post. You can read it here. A look at the data shows me there is much about DV we already know, but some interesting tidbits. Time to use my Ascii skills again:

2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey
---------------------------------------------------------
                             Last Year %      Lifetime %
Type                         Men   Women      Men   Women
---------------------------------------------------------
Rape / Made to penetrate     1.1     1.1      6.2    18.3 
- by intimate partner        0.5     0.6      2.2     9.4

Violence by intimate partner:
Physical violence            4.5     3.6     25.7    30.3
Severe violence              2.0     2.7     13.8    24.3
Psychological violence      18.1    13.9     48.8    48.4
----------------------------------------------------------

Other than that, stalking is mostly something women experience with mostly male perpetrators while for men the rate between the sexes was more equal. Also, as for the more violent items of severe violence, it is more women who suffer from it, which is something we already knew (well you knew, if you read my summary). What surprised me at first was that the intimate partner rape in the last year was almost equal as well. Even though one could have figured that out via the equal overall rate, I didn't make that mental connection yet.

Title IX - A summary

Found via an article in an article. Somehow. Credit goes to mensactivism.org. Here is the summary:

In actuality, between 1981-2005 men's teams per school dropped 17 percent while women's teams rose by 34 percent. The reason is this: the proportional participation clause in Title IX, upheld by Duncan's own department, states that if the number of female athletes is not "proportional" to the number of women enrolled at an institution then the school is technically "discriminating."

This little line may be small enough for Duncan to forget, but it's significant enough to have schools scared silly. Colleges frequently end up cutting men's teams -- James Madison University alone cut ten teams in 2007, seven of which were male -- in order to balance the gender scales, meaning men's athletics have become dependent on women's interest and participation.

The problem with anti-discrimination legislation like Title IX is not with its intentions. The trouble is that the goal posts keep moving. It's not longer sufficient to have gender equality -- now feminists are seeking gender parity. Organizations like the AAUW fail to accept that men and women are different, and that they may choose to participate in different activities.

That is it in a nutshell. The paper linked in the article (Title IX and Athletics: A Primer (2008)) made some interesting points:

Title IX should focus on the overall availability of opportunities to accommodate interest, not on the selections of those opportunities by one sex or the other. Ironically, Title IX policy ignores actual interest levels and capabilities of either sex as determining factors in whether the interests and abilities of students have been met.

A variety of research points to lower interest in sports, on a variety of levels, among girls compared to boys. Girls’ participation rates and behaviors in all types of physical activity consistently lag behind those of boys. Boys are more likely to participate on sports teams than girls.24 Girls also join organized sports at later ages than boys and drop out earlier.

Many Title IX advocates say, “If you build it, they will come.” But that hasn’t proved true. When Brown University was sued in 1992 under Title IX, the varsity female teams at the university had more than 80 unfilled slots. The school had built it, but the women didn’t come. Further, coaches of female teams have talked on camera about their difficulty in keeping female athletes who don’t make the travel squad, even when they are receiving some financial aid. Coaches have also talked about their difficulty in filling the minimum number of positions desired by the athletic director to achieve proportionality, often because the minimum demands more players than the sport itself requires.

Men’s teams, on the other hand, are often no longer allowed to keep any of the numerous men seeking walk-on positions. Further, many schools have capped the number of men on team rosters, usually at numbers far lower than a competitive program needs.

Of course interest is important, that should be common sense as Title IX shouldn't be used to reduce possibilities, but to create new ones. The report points to other different interests:

U.S. Department of Education data show that women are more likely than men to participate in various afterschool activities, except for athletics.43 Among high school sophomores, 55% of men, compared to 42.5% of women, competed in interscholastic athletics.

But in other activities, women comprise the majority:

9.9% of women, compared to 6.8% of men, participate in academic clubs.
19.2% of women, compared to 8.1% of men, participate in cheerleading and drill team.
10.9% of women, compared to 8.1% of men, participate in hobby clubs.
26.8% of women, compared to 16.3% of men, participate in music programs.
9.1% of women, compared to 7.6% of men, participate in vocational clubs.

If the same strict proportionality standards applied to these extracurricular activities, women would likely face the same roster caps and program cuts that men face in athletics.

The last part people, the original article had a similar argument:

the AAUW and other feminist outlets would like to see Title IX-like legislation used to tackle disparities in academics, namely the "crisis" of women in math and science. In short, they want Congress to legislate parity in these disciplines, once again ignoring the real and important differences that exist between the genders. (Of course, this is always one-sided. I have yet to see the AAUW argue for more male English or Psychology majors. Nor have I seen any outrage about the shortage of male nurses.)

There is an obvious double standard here as inequality seems to be defined by the lack of female participants, yet never by the lack of male ones.

On with some more data:

across the board, opportunities for women were increasing, while opportunities for men were decreasing. From 1981 to 2005, male athletes per school declined 6%, and men’s teams per school dropped 17%. Meanwhile, female athletes per school rose 34%, and women’s teams per school rose 34%.52 The total number of women’s teams has exceeded the number of men’s teams since 1995 [...] Every male sport, with the exception of baseball, has decreased or remained static. Non-revenue sports such as wrestling, tennis, and gymnastics have been the hardest hit. [...] men’s gymnastics is practically extinct, with fewer than 20 varsity programs left in the country.

The discussion on this issue, or the huge BUT usually centers around football. As the fixation on football teams leads to less resources. Of course a lack of diversity is certainly not good. Here is what the report says about football:

when the resources are invested to create a competitive program, football helps women. A Social Science Quarterly article by Patrick James Rishe concluded that women’s sports at schools with big football programs fared better than women’s sports at schools with smaller football programs. While Rishe’s research does verify what the quota proponents tell us—expenditures are higher for football players than for any other sport—the research also calculates that where the football expenditures are highest, so, too, are the expenditures on female athletes.

In another study by Donald E. Agthe and R. Bruce Billings for the Journal of Sport Management, the authors concluded that football profits were a significant influence on achieving financial gender equity in athletic departments.

The Chronicle of Higher Education found a similar pattern when it examined Division I schools with and without football programs:

While women’s sports are clearly on the rise across the board, the rate of growth varies widely among the different kinds of colleges in Division I. Wealthy sports programs can subsidize new opportunities and greater spending for women, but those without revenue-producing football and basketball teams lag. And the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening.

[...] Football is not the issue causing schools to drop men’s sports. The Title IX gender quota drives schools to drop men’s programs despite the schools’ best efforts and fervent wishes for keeping all teams intact. Even when there is no football team to blame, men still suffer. That is not equal opportunity.
The College Sports Council study shows that even football has seen a decline in the Title IX era. As shown in Figure 3, the percentage of NCAA member schools with football teams has declined since 1980.

Surely some food for thought. Damn, I really suck at writing that last thoughtful line.

The CDC Survey, copy and paste resource

I had a recent far too long discussion on Reddit lately regarding the results of the survey and was pretty much surprised how offended an otherwise open community (2X) would react on such outlandish concepts that "Men and Women can stop rape" as opposed to "Men can stop rape". Of course I brought up the CDC statistics and the almost equal number of male and female rape victims, there was however a lot of bantering, back and forth and denying what was going on. So to save me some time for the future this is going to become my copy and paste go to place for this interesting survey:

Using the legal definition of rape, the "National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010)", a large (more than 18,000 people interviewed) survey by the CDC, comes to the conclusion that the risk to fall victim to a rape / an attempted rape / a drug induced rape in 2009 was about equal for men and for women (both 1.1%). For men the chance that the perpetrator in that case was a woman was about 80%. A ballpark number for the sex of the perpetrators tells me it is a 60/40 split, meaning about 40% of rapes / attempted rapes / drug induced rapes have been committed by women.

Clarifications, citations and calculations:

As this was not a prominent finding of the survey (as a focus on male victims / female perpetrators is seldom in the spotlight) and the CDC failed to define female-on-male rape as rape, I have to explain in detail where this data is coming from.

Consider the following example:

*** Trigger warning for rape scenario ***

Scenario A: Jane passes out drunk at a party. John has sex with her.

Scenario B: Jack passes out drunk at a party. Jill has sex with him.

*** Trigger warning for rape scenario ***

Both scenarios are an equivalent to each other and to my best knowledge both scenarios are considered rape in most parts of the USA.[1] Via the CDC definitions, Scenario A would have been considered as rape, while Scenario B would have been considered "Other Sexual Violence - Made to penetrate".[2] Legally speaking, I am comparing oranges with oranges here, even though the CDC pulls the "that wasn't rape-rape" card. Now if you compare the percentage of rape for women with the percentage of "Other Sexual Violence - Made to penetrate" (=rape) for men (again, both numbers include attempts as well as drug induced rape) the number in the last year for both is 1.1%.[3]

As for the other numbers, 98.2% of women have only been raped by men and 79.2% of men have only been raped by women.[4] Via these numbers, one can calculate the split of the perpetrators (my ballpark number).[5]

Most of the discussion around these numbers involve the difference between the lifetime numbers and the numbers for the last year.[3] Looking at the lifetime numbers we get a 18.3/4.8 (female/male) difference. What is going on here? The lifetime numbers are a reflection of the past, while the numbers of last year show us what is going on recently. None of us can affect the past, but we all can affect the now and the future with our actions. Only looking at the past (lifetime) figures while ignoring more recent figures is a poor baseline for making good choices now. Several explanations can be made why the numbers differ so much. For once, one can argue that women have become more aggressive (there are more female-on-male rapes now)[6] or/and that men have become less aggressive (there have been more male-on-female rapes in the past than now)[7] or/and that the male lifetime numbers suffer from a poor understanding of male victimization in the past (the male lifetime number is underreported as the view of male victimization is changing)[8]. People tend to recall events taking place within recent history better then events that have taken place more distantly in their memory. Thus statistics regarding recent history tend to be more accurate.

At least one other study has found comparable victimization rates.[9]

Sources:

[1] - Wikipedia: Laws regarding rape - There is no national rape law in the United States, due to the United States v. Morrison ruling that parts of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 were unconstitutional. Each state has its own laws concerning sexual aggression. Nor is there any national standard in the US for defining and reporting male-male or female-perpetrated rapes. In most states, the definition of rape is broad, with respect to genders and the nature of the acts involved. Info on the 4 largest states (containing 1/3 of US pop): (In case this reference is questioned/challenged as inaccurate.) None are gender-specific, all include CA: "A Penal Code 261 pc "rape" occurs...under California rape law...when an individual engages in sexual intercourse with another person when the sexual act is accomplished (1) against that person's will, or (2) without that person’s consent.." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_regarding_rape

[2][3][4] - National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010) - http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf

[2] - See table on page 19 and the definitions on page 17:

Rape is defined as any completed or attempted unwanted vaginal (for women), oral, or anal penetration through the use of physical force (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threats to physically harm and includes times when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent. Rape is separated into three types, completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, and completed alcohol or drug facilitated penetration.

Being made to penetrate someone else includes times when the victim was made to, or there was an attempt to make them, sexually penetrate someone without the victim’s consent because the victim was physically forced (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threatened with physical harm, or when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent. - -Among women, this behavior reflects a female being made to orally penetrate another female’s vagina or anus. - -Among men, being made to penetrate someone else could have occurred in multiple ways: being made to vaginally penetrate a female using one’s own penis; orally penetrating a female’s vagina or anus; anally penetrating a male or female; or being made to receive oral sex from a male or female. It also includes female perpetrators attempting to force male victims to penetrate them, though it did not happen.

[3] - Table 2.1 on page 18 and table 2.2 on page 19

[4] - For female rape victims, 98.1% reported only male perpetrators [...] a majority of male victims reported only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (79.2%) - Page 24

[5] - Calculation of the ballpark number:

98.1 + 20.8 = 118.9 male rapists
79.2 + 1.9 = 81.1 female rapists
81.1 / 200 = 0.4055 -> 40% female rapists

Limitation of that number. We can not be sure that the 1.9% and the 20.8% include ONLY male/female perpetrators as we do not know the figure of people who have been raped by both men and women. Also, even though most victims of both sexes report only one perpetrator we can not be sure how people who report multiple rapes would influence the number.

[6] Women are increasingly taking on a role where they are the sexual aggressor/sexual initiator. That role does not come without risks and one of them is presuming consent where there is none. The narrative that the overwhelming majority of rapist as well as the insistence (of media, law and surveys) of categorizing those actions by women as something else than rape only increases the risks that these women will at some stage rape a partner since they are less likley to evaluate their own behaviour because why make efforts to avoid something that almost never happens and which only truly evil girls do. See also From Deviance to Normalcy: Women as Sexual Aggressors (2002) - Studies have revealed that young girls have become socially assertive in calling young boys on the telephone and even asking for dates at a very early age (Anderson, Arceneaux, Carter, Miller, & King, 1995). Also, women are now expected to take an active role in sex (O'Sullivan & Byers, 1996), and are expressing themselves sexually in aggressive behavior patterns (Anderson & Struckman-Johnson, 1998). Rates of sexually aggressive behaviors among women vary from one segment of the United States to another, but the evidence presented here shows that as many as 7% of women self-report the use of physical force to obtain sex, 40% self-report sexual coercion, and over 50% self-report initiating sexual contact with a man while his judgment was impaired by drugs or alcohol (Anderson, 1998). Given these numbers, it is appropriate to conclude that women's sexual aggression now represents a usual or typical pattern (i.e., has become normal), within the limits of the data reviewed in this paper. - http://www.ejhs.org/volume5/deviancetonormal.htm

[7] - BJS - NCVS Rape Rates - http://www.bjs.gov/content/glance/rape.cfm

[8] - Men are becoming aware of this issue and to a lesser degree buy into the narrative that men should welcome all sex. This notion I suspect also explains some (I don’t have any idea of how much) of the difference in lifetime numbers as elder men are more likely to recall past events as being consensual when they in fact were not. In order to recall them as non-consensual one must recognize that one have the option to consent or not. / Researchers into the field of traumatic memory recovery note that the longer the period of time a person is asked recall a traumatic event, the less likely they are to remember it. How this works is that surveys that ask about a traumatic event in the last six months get less false negatives than those that ask about a traumatic event in the last twelve months which, itself, gets considerably fewer false negatives than lifetime prevalence. For men this effect is even more pronounced. "16% of men with documented cases of sexual abuse considered their early childhood experiences sexual abuse, compared with 64% of women with documented cases of sexual abuse. These gender differences may reflect inadequate measurement techniques or an unwillingness on the part of men to disclose this information (Widom and Morris 1997)." [...] Comparing the lifetime rate of sexual abuse for men and women is misleading in determining their relative risk of sexual violence, simply because men disclose childhood sexual abuse four times less often than women. There may be many reasons for this. It’s unlikely that it’s due to sexual abuse being less impactful on men because studies have shown that sexual abuse does have a profound impact on men, and this includes female-on-male sexual abuse. For instance, the link between sexual abuse and suicide attempts is stronger in boys (Rhodes et al. 2001) and sexually abused boys are twice as likely to commit suicide (Molnar et al. 2001) than sexually abused girls. In addition to that, there is a risk factor for sexually abused men to sexually abuse others is if their abuser was female (Salter et al. 2003). One possible reason for men not disclosing, or even “forgetting”, is quite simple: our social narrative does not allow for, nor does it depict, the sexual abuse of males. To a degree it allows for the sexual abuse of boys by men, but not boys by women or adult men by anyone. In a study on the effects of retention interval and gender on the perception of violence, Ahola et al. (2009) found that eyewitnesses rated female perpetrators less violent than male when reporting after an interval of one to three weeks as opposed to ten minutes. Ahola et al. (2009) proposed that over time eyewitnesses reinterpreted the behavior of perpetrators in order to conform to gender stereotypes regarding violence. Widom and Morris (1997) propose that a similar process is occurring with male victims of sexual abuse (particularly by females) as, over time, they reinterpret their victimization to conform with the dominant social narrative regarding sexual abuse: that it happens to women and is perpetrated by men. They will do this by reframing their abuse as consensual or as a rite of passage or less violent than it was or by “forgetting” it completely. The more time passes, the more our memories conform to the dominant social narrative. "Gender differences in reporting and in perceptions of early childhood experiences may reflect early socialization experiences in which men learn to view these behaviors as non-predatory and non-abusive. Many of the sexual experiences considered to be sexual abuse (showing/touching sex organs, kissing in a sexual way) may be seen as developmental rites of passage, part of a learning process (Widom and Morris 1997.)" Note that this “forgetting” does not mean that there is no psychological effect; only that the source of that effect is buried, becoming a silent trigger for self-destructive behavior.- http://www.genderratic.com/?p=836

[9] - Predictors of Sexual Coercion Against Women and Men: A Multilevel, Multinational Study of University Students (2007) - http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID45-PR45.pdf

EDIT: Some clarifications taken from the feministing post of that survey

EDIT: Genderratic has a great post on that same survey. Read it here. Added one part of their article to the sources section.

The "A Voice for Men" Overview.

While I do not agree with everything they say, here is a nice overview of numbers. This time with written out links to have a nice copy & paste resource:

Unsheltered Homeless (2009) [http://www.societaldistress.org/files/HO-HAR2009.pdf]
Women – 12,000 – 4%
Men – 240,000 – 96%

Life Expectancy (2006) [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0105.pdf]
Women – 80.8 Years
Men – 75.7 Years

Suicides (2008) [http://www.afsp.org/index.cfm?page_id=04ECB949-C3D9-5FFA-DA9C65C381BAAEC0]
Women – 7,585 - 19%
Men – 28,450 - 81%

Deaths by Homicide (2004) [http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/Table_12_2006.html]
Women – 3,856 – 20%
Men – 14,717 – 80%

Deaths from Cancer (2004) [http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/Table_12_2006.html]
Women – 269,819
Men – 290,069

Deaths from HIV/AIDS (2004) [http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/Table_12_2006.html]
Women – 3,357
Men – 8,756

Federal Funds for Sex Specific Cancer Research [http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding]
Women – Breast Cancer – $631,000,000 - 40,000 Deaths
Men – Prostate Cancer – $300,000,000 - 33,000 Deaths

Deaths on the Job (2010) [http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfoi_rates_2010hb.pdf]
Women – 355 - 7%
Men – 4,192 - 93%

Injuries on the Job (2007) [http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/osch0040.pdf]
Women – 36%
Men – 64%

College Enrollment (2009) [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98]
Women – 58% - 11,658,000
Men – 42% - 8,770,000

Affirmative Action Education Programs (Gender Specific) [http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/mens-issues/bias-against-men-expands-education-gap/]
Women – Yes
Men – No

Unemployment Rates (2010) [http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat2.pdf]
Women – 8.6% – 6,199,000
Men – 10.5% - 8,626,000

Average Hours Worked Per Week (2010) [http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat22.pdf]
Women – 36.1
Men – 40.2

High School Graduation Rates (2005) [http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48.htm]
Women – 72%
Men – 65%

Incarceration Rates (2009) [http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/pim09st.pdf]
Women – 114,979 - 7%
Men – 1,502,490 - 93%

Child Custody Rates [http://deltabravo.net/custody/bias_essay.php]
Women – 11,268,000 custodial mothers
Men – 2,907,000 custodial fathers

US Military Deaths From 1950 – 2010 [http://www.militaryfactory.com/vietnam/casualties.asp][http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf][http://usiraq.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000671#miltfatstat]
Women – 139 - 0.01%
Men – 100,063 - 99.9%

Federally Funded Battered Shelters [http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/fysb/content/familyviolence/factsheet.htm]
Women – 2,000+ $300,000,000 per year
Men – None – $0

Federally Funded Health Offices and Research 1970 – Present (not including cancer research) [http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/mens-health-the-forgotten/]
Women Only – Office, Projects and Programs 70+ – Funds – $100,000,000,000
Men Only – None – $0

Forced Selective Service
Women – No
Men – Yes

Drug and Alcohol Addiction and Abuse Rates (2010) [http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.pdf]
Women – 5.8%
Men – 12.2%

NCFM asks the United Nations to end all forms of discrimination against men | National Coalition For Men (NCFM)

Well even I hesitate to completely steal that one. A good summary of discriminations against men, as presented by the NCFM for the UN. One really has to wonder why anything like this isn't considered yet. Some examples:

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the lives of men are considered equally as valuable as the lives of women.

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that men have just as much right to be evacuated from war zones as women have (an exception can be made in cases of pregnant women and nursing mothers).

While reserving priority space on lifeboats for children over adults would still be permissible, men must be given equal priority as women with regards to being evacuated from ships (an exception can be made in cases of pregnant women and nursing mothers).

Men shall be evacuated from all other dangerous situations with equal priority as women (an exception can be made in cases of pregnant women and nursing mothers).

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that men’s health is given equal priority to women’s health, including in such areas as state funding for medical research. An exception can be made in instances in which a State Party wishes to spend more research money on behalf of the sex with a lower life expectancy.

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that all social welfare services treat men equally with women and are just as available to men as they are to women.

This is mostly just common sense, it is kind of sad that this isn't considered already. Read the whole thing here

"Man Up" is code for "fuck how you feel. conform to your traditional gender role"

Stolen from a redditor. Short and straight to the point, I like it.

Btw....Alzheimer is not a women's disease either...

Found via Jerry's blog, here is the pdf:

More women than men have Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Almost two-thirds of all Americans living with Alzheimer’s are women. Of the 5.2 million people over age 65 with Alzheimer’s in the United States, 3.4 million are women and 1.8 million are men. Based on estimates from ADAMS, 16 percent of women aged 71 and older have Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia compared with 11 percent of men.

Further analyses show that the larger proportion of older women than men who have Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia is primarily explained by the fact that women live longer on average than men. Moreover, many studies of the age-specific incidence (development of new cases) of Alzheimer’s disease or any dementia have found no significant difference by gender. Thus, women are not more likely than men to develop dementia at any given age.

Men just die earlier.

Circumcision to reduce HIV in Africa....well maybe not that good idea

We talked about it here before. It seems some of the worries here are becoming true:

Male circumcision is becoming a canal for new HIV infections as men are now reluctant to use condoms on the basis that they are 60 percent safe, a government official has said. [...] “We have a huge challenge where male circumcision has created a canal to those who do not want to use condoms. [...] According to Khumalo, Sub-Sahara Africa still records the highest figures of new infections with about 7 000 estimated infections despite the increase in the numbers of men who are getting circumcised.

*Sigh*

Besides that there is a lot going on with circumcision:

More than 40 000 Zimbabwean adult men, according to reports, have been circumcised since the programme began in 2010 and 100 000 more are expected to undergo circumcision by the end of 2012.

Zimbabwe has set a goal of circumcising 1,2 million men by 2015.

Sinokuthemba Xaba, Zimbabwe’s national male circumcision co-ordinator told the state media that approximately 11 000 men were circumcised by December 2010, with over 20 000 having been circumcised this year alone.

He said preparations were under way for the launch of a neo-natal circumcision programme, where the medical procedure will be performed free of charge on male babies as soon as they are born.

In August, government started an ambitious programme aimed at male cabinet ministers, MPs and councilors to undergo circumcision.

Oh my....

Recent DV data from the CDC Survey

I didn't really look at the DV data in the recent CDC study. Luckily someone else did. God, I am lazy. Via Glenn Sacks:

within the past year, 6.5% of men and 6.3% of women said they were victims of violence at the hands of an intimate partner. Another 18% of men and only 14% of women reported themselves the victims of “psychological aggression.” And when it came to being a victim of “coercive control” by an intimate partner, males outnumbered females by almost a 3:2 margin, 15.2% to 10.7%.

That last is significant of course because the entire DV industry has for years told us that DV is all about power and control. So isn’t it interesting that women do that far more than do men.

When it comes to lifetime violence (as defined by the survey), women do indeed report greater victimization, but the gap between men and women isn’t great. For example, lifetime figures for physical violence victimization by an intimate partner are 32.9% for women and 28.2% for men.

U.S. Census Child Support Figures

Via Glenn Sacks:

While we’re on the subject, it’s worth noting that the U.S. Census Bureau came out with the latest child support figures earlier this month. The most recent data here are for 2009.

The good news is that the number of custody orders with dads as the custodial parent has rocketed skyward. In 2007, they were only 16.2% of the total; in 2009 17.8% of parents with custody orders were dads. At that rate it’ll only be 20 years before we reach equality in child custody. Break out the champagne.

What’s also true is that, even though they’re ordered to pay more than mothers, fathers do a lot better job of doing so. Fathers are ordered to pay, on average, $5,997 per year whereas mothers are only ordered to pay $5,601. Despite being ordered to pay more, fathers pay 62.8% of the ordered amount while mothers pay 54.6%. And 42% of custodial mothers receive all of what they’re owed, while only 34.1% of fathers do.

Rule 34 explains

It is a novelity account from reddit about rule34 (if it exists, there is porn of it). Pretty interesting:

On the surface, Rule 34 seems like a hilarious idea; if it exists, there is porn of it. The humor lies in the shock and surreality of the moment for the average user stumbling upon the pornographic interpretation of an idea held dear.

And while I agree that it often times can be funny, the truth is that most of these are not being created as a joke. If Rule 34 really was just an anti-authoritarian 'rebel yell' of the internet, it would have passed into obscurity long ago. But we can see that it has been consistently happening since the dawn of the world wide web, and even longer before. Truth be told, the only difference between today and a few centuries ago is the means of distribution.

It's human nature to sexualize. For every conceivable person, concept, object or emotion there has been at least one person who got off thinking about it. There is no shame in that either; for we are merely prisms, refracting the energies of biology and evolutionary drive into a rainbow spectrum of sexuality. Yet despite the rich diversity of what is capable, we may sometimes feel forced to see the world, and even ourselves, through the colored lenses of a chosen few. This is no way to live your life. You will not feel whole without being at peace with your sexual identity, and you will not be able to love your fellow peoples as deeply without being able to truly see them.

Yes, that above is a picture of Donnie Darko kissing Frank the Rabbit, and it exists because someone out there truly enjoys the sentiment of the idea. Someone out there was moved by the characters, and so took it upon themselves to create from nothing, a way to express their desires and ultimately themselves. It is this form of expression that will ultimately reach across the spans of the internet to touch the soul of someone, somewhere who needs it the most. They may be an avid masturbator, comfortable and experienced with their wants and their body, or they may be in the midst of a sexual awakening, alone and terrified of the implications of their desires. Either way, this art form will for one brief moment allow them a shared connection and reminder that they are not alone.

tl;dr You wonder what the people that draw these are like, and I tell you they are no different from anyone else.

More on the ugliness penalty for men

I already blogged about this, apparently there is more:

A team at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg in northern Germany questioned more than 3,000 people about their career, and compared this with rankings of how attractive they were.

The results suggest that being one point more attractive was worth a three percent wage hike, while being five points more attractive boosted a career by the same amount as having a university degree.

Professor Christian Pfeifer said his study, published this week in the Applied Economics Letters journal, also showed that the importance of looks in the workplace was even more important for men than it was for women.

Act surprised people. Found via Typhonblue on Reddit. Thanks.

Men's health covers

God, I need those abs....

(Not really, it is just cosmo for men)